Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

'The Brothers of the Free Spirit, the Assassins who are the innermost circle of the Ismaelites and Sufis, and the Thugs?'

'The last two I had heard of before I came here, and you have said enough to imply that you have sympathies at least with the Assassins. But you make it all sound like a world-wide conspiracy.'

Ali laughed lightly. 'No such thing is possible. For the supreme tenet of all three orders is that their members should be free, obligated by one principle only: that when you meet a like-minded person in need or difficulties you help him. Conspirators require rides, plans, obedience. Obedience, of all things, is what we most detest.'

'I am none the wiser, but you had better continue with your story'. You had just asked this Abraham how things were in Ingerlond.'

'Not well.' He sighed, and shifted a little on the cold stone he was sitting on. 'In almost all places the Refusal lives in hidden places, for too many in the last fifty years have been put to the torture and burned. Yet it is true that many hold to the beliefs of John Wycliffe, even if they do follow the road he signposted for us and even if they do not openly confess their faith as their fathers and mothers did. Yet, generally speaking, a Lollard preacher, in a graveyard, outside a city's gates, even at a market cross, will draw a crowd of sympathisers, who will leave strengthened if not actually prepared to march against the King and bishops as Wat Tyler. John Ball, Jack Straw and John Cade did. And thousands with them.'

'How far, then, will they go clown the road of the free spirit?' Uma insisted.

'Oh, not far, and not beyond applying the light of good reason to the doctrines of the Church. They will deny the presence of Jesus in the sacraments, saying it is a strange god that can be lapped by dogs and eaten by mice. They can see how much against Scripture it is that priests should be able to sell forgiveness of sins, and they find the belief in Purgatory whereby the rich can buy their way into heaven through masses said for their souls abominable. They will condemn chastity in priests and monks as leading to unnatural vices, and in nuns as leading to abortion and infanticide. The more extreme declare all war to be evil, it being the murdering and plundering of the poor to win glory for kings, even the making of weapons to be evil…'

'But all this is merely nay-saying,' Uma cried. 'Do they not speculate about what can be put in the place of all the evil shit?'

'Some do in the privacy of their homes or in the company of three or four like-minded friends they can trust.' If Abraham was surprised or shocked by her vehemence, he showed it only in the soothing tone he adopted. 'For instance, they will argue that the giving of women in marriage is unjust, not out of lewdness as their enemies proclaim but because women should not be treated as chattels. Some argue that all property should be held in common, that councils where all sit together should decide what laws and customs should be followed rather than the whims of kings, lords and bishops.'

'And what sort of people turn out for the Brothers?'

'All sorts. From ploughmen to gentry, even lords. Eighty years ago, when he ruled the realm as King Richard's regent, John of Gaunt, great-grandfather of our present king, protected John Wycliffe. Lord Cobham, Sir John Oldcastle as he was before he married, continued that tradition and followed the teaching of the Lollards. He, however, was burned at the command of the present king's father, forty-five years ago. Almost worse, thanks to the cunning of the powers that be, he is now reviled as a drunken, whoreson coward, nicknamed Falstalf.'

For a moment his face was clouded with sadness. Then he went on: 'But the main reason why we thrive at present only a little, compared with a few years back, is these present troubles, these wars between the great lords. Since the plague came a hundred years ago, there have been fewer people to firm the land for them so wages have gone up and prices have dropped. Therefore the lords covet each other's land and instead of settling the disputes in courts or Parliament or by the King's command, they fight. And that means any able-bodied man can get a good day's wage wearing the livery of his master with the prospect, if he's on the winning side, of loot, booty, a share of ransom money, even land of his own or a tenancy. If he's on the losing side he just runs away and lives to fight another day. Also, because of these wars, outside London and the big cities law and civil society have broken down. There is nothing to rebel against and every chance of bettering oneself in the crude, brute anarchy that exists. Since anarchy of a sort is already with us there-is no point in striving and risking death at the stake for the higher anarchy that might ennoble us all.'

And so we went on through the last heavy dark hours before dawn until the sun rose and with it the less than heavenly city: we could hear the clopping of hoofs, the bleat of sheep driven to the shambles, the squeal of cart-wheels, the shouts and calls of street-sellers, the general hubbub of the great wen, that weeping boil, in whose innermost heart we now were hidden.

It was about then that Brother Abraham told us just how holy was the spot in which we sheltered, dedicated as half of it was to the boy saint St Pancras, a bone of whose finger was kept in a reliquary in the second of the two tiny churches. It was, he said, the first church founded in Albion by St Augustine and the spot chosen for it was the site of a shrine that predated even the great Julius Caesar who built the Tower. This shrine or temple, as old as the henges in the west, belonged, so Abraham's account had it, to King Lud who built the city around it and was indeed no king but a river god.

The family of beggar-folk got themselves up and discreetly, silently, slipped away up the stone stairs. Now we could see them properly, divested of their rags and threadbare blankets, they revealed themselves from the darkness of their skin, darker than mine, almost as dark as Uma's, to be gypsies. I wondered where the rest of their tribe were and why they had separated from them.

The noise came and went in waves as folk opened the doors above and came in to make offerings or prayers to the image we had seen in the side-chapel: the Mother, Mary. Isis, Ishtar, Parvati. Below the stone floor our talk continued as we awaited the arrival of Enoch the fishmonger, and returned to the concept, the vision, of the Perfect Society that dominated our thoughts and longings. Abraham especially dwelt on Ingerlond before the Normans came: it had been, he said, rural and village-based, yet in its way as happy and blessed as the Heavenly City all three of us looked towards and which Vijayanagara represented, in much the same way as its emperor and empress are avatars for the gods Vishnu and Parvati.

We also speculated about the way the same light and knowing-ih-ss had come to each of us and our fellow hierophants but by such different routes and out of such alien beginnings.

In East Cheap a letter awaited me.

Ali

Shortly after your departure early this morning Alderman Dawtrey was honoured with a visit by Lord Scales, Constable of the Tower. He is a forceful old man and came accompanied by a troop of men-at-arms. He was of a mind to grant Anish, the few servants we have left and myself more comfortable rooms than the Alderman can supply, but in the Tower, which apparently is not merely a fortress but a royal palace too.

He is angry that we accepted hospitality from Richard Neville and Edward March in Calais and that we connived in March's escape last night. However, I pointed out to him that Anish and I had had very little to do with any of this, being guided entirely by the only member of our party who knew anything about Ingerlond – namely you. I think he understood.